Like a Sequoia Cone in Fire

After a tenured faculty member ‘welcomed’ me to Fullerton by telling me that “consent has no place in an acting classroom,” I momentarily regretted coming to California.

Said special faculty friend has a lot of power in our department.

But, my mission is to fuel change in the industries of both live performance and theatre education. And I know that change is always met with some resistance. So, I used his comments as fuel.

Since, I have begun to find spaces in which I can exist meaningfully in the CSUF community.

As the semester closes, I look back at the past few months, and I see myself like a sequoia pinecone; under pressure and fire, I’ve begun to bloom and take root.

I’ve worked with really eager faculty and young artists in the music, opera, and dance departments, facilitating consent-based performance workshops outside of the theatre department.

I collaborated with Greg Tyrl and the cast of The Nether produced by The Wayward Artist here in Orange County. We had fantastic discussions of identity, reality, love, surveillance, and whether the power to live freely will ever be granted to any of us. I combined my training and experience in intimacy choreography, youth cognitive development, and pedagogy to serve this production. I was honored to work with incredible actors to consensually craft intimacy choreography that communicated this deep and disturbing story while inviting the audience to reflect on our world.

I choreographed the intimacy and the violence for a new play in development titled Women of Zalongo, which hinges on themes of reclaimed cultural identity, gendered violence, and inherited inter-generational trauma. I also helped to write an NEA grant application for further development and community engagement elements for this script. I’m definitely excited to continue working on this piece, which reflects upon the use of sexual violence to control women throughout history and in the current moment, a conversation which I think is so necessary.

I discovered that the production of She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms was recognized by the National KCACTF Board, and we received awards for Collaboration and Excellence in Production—and several young artists I worked with on this project won personal recognition at the national level. Although I’m no longer on that campus, I’m so incredibly proud of this creative team and absolutely believe that they deserve these honors.

I have continued facilitating online (Zoom-based) workshops for Theatrical Intimacy Education, including workshops in Florida, New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

I have kayaked a lot, kept my seedlings alive, and founded an academic, peer-reviewed journal that will publish its first issue shortly, and which I hope will fuel further change in our industry.

I think I’ll be okay, despite what some people say.